elena's salad

in what seems another lifetime ago, i had a friend named elena enter my life. Our lives were mirrors of each other--a husband, a boy, a girl, a dog and a job. she invited me and the kids to join her and hers for pizza, delivered, and a salad one day.
alas, she has moved aways from here, but never away. when i make this, i think of her, as she helped expand my concept of what a salad is. (it is NOT iceberg, tomato and cucumber. more on that another time).

spring greens
broccoli slaw
sliced onions (optional)
nuts--almonds, pistacheos
dried cranberries
crumbled bleu cheese (also optional)
balsamic vinagrette

the ten dollar salad

the name of this comes from my sister who used to work at a HoJos, or more formally a Howard Johnsons restaurant. there was a one-price salad bar and of course some customers probably abused the concept. to organize this would cost more than ten dollars, certainly, but assemble what's available from leftovers and it's a cool and inexpensive answer to WFD?

the salad:
lettuce
carrots
onions
celery
cabbage
frozen peas, thawed
broccoli
cauliflower
radishes
etc














the stuff on top that makes it taste good, makes it an expensive, calorie-wise choice:
ham
cheddar
hard-boiled eggs
turkey
sesame seeds
raisins
chinese noodles
croutons



the idea is to make everything bite sized and an interesting combination of flavors
for this, ken's steak house thousand island is the only choice for dressing.

friday nite

pizza for dinner. it's friday.
the cheesiest and cheapest tonight: 2.99 for a red baron cheese pizza.
only nominally nutritious with a salad.

this one had romaine
onions
shredded carrots
radishes sliced thinly
red cabbage
safeway seasoned croutons
kraft ranch (girlie pours it right on the pizza. yuck)

chowdah en crackahs

Many an enjoyable lunch or dinner was had on Cape Cod--New England clam chowder (it is illegal to serve Manhattan style in massachusetts) with a Caesar salad and a bracing, chilled to the bone white wine. its' how i learned to really enjoy pinot gris (though my introduction to oregon wines was a decade earlier in the backwoods of Maine--picked up along the way at one of those NH liquor stores). anyway...there's probably chicken in the soup somewhere. but i didn't put it there.

2 cans or so of some chowder. chunky or progresso works, so does safeway PACIFIC fresh chowder. heated.
served, no other way, with westminster oyster crackers (delivered from dakin farms in vermont. gotta love that internet thingie)

go to dakinfarm.com and search westminster crackers. go for the individual packages and you'll feel like you're eating at a restaurant and limit everyone to two packages for portion control.

salad (like i need to tell you)
romaine, torn
kens' creamy caesar dressing
marzettis' new york texas toast caesar croutons (yeah, whatever)
parmesan cheese
anchovies, if you must
hard boiled eggs, chopped if you got em. feed some of the yolk to the dog.

served up tonite with cameron hughes russian river 2006 chardonnay
(lemony, almost as light as a sav blanc, but meatier, not so heavy as oaked chards, not as dry as some of the 06s we're finding).